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The Cavalry As the early results curdle, I text my father three
words - This Is Bad. Like thousands of others, I’ve spent the last year
volunteering and working to elect Hillary Clinton. The long fight. The good
fight. The first fight I’ve truly thrown myself into, again and again. Election
Night finds me in southern Virginia, a ramshackle campaign office held together
by duct tape, off-white cracked paint, and five other community organizers.
Growing up, the evening news was my family’s sacred time. Six years old, I watch
a Palestinian child dive behind wreckage as gunfire crackles. Peter Jennings’
lullaby voice informs us that the child is unaccounted for. My father responds
to my text with two words - I know. Hour
ago a packed office, trusty volunteers using an auto-dialer to rapid fire call
as many inconsistent voters as we can. After polls close in Virginia,
volunteers shuffle out. Well-wishes. Hugs. These aren’t my volunteers. My
volunteer team is two hours to the east, forty plu…

Inaugural
Occasional Poem: The White HouseCasting
Couch Is Visited By Zeus as Golden RainBY THE AMERICAN POET AND SATIRIST ERIC SIGLERII
thought I saw a smoke screen or a clouddescend
through spears that rallied at the sky,and
railed against the theme -four
years beneath a shroud-until
I woke to see that, in my eye,I
could not emancipate the dream from
shackles chained to starlight - a
strident stalker wading through the night,an
endless specter searching for a theme....IIBut
then I saw sun's gilded feet retreat - high-heeled
hopes broken by the darkness,

"ANXIETIES OF INFLUENCE, THE CONFLUENCE OF POETIC RESPONSES TO BEREAVEMENT"

I hesitate to call this a review - it isn't - it's an appreciation, and a comment. I should say that I think Stranger, Baby by Emily Berryis one of the best books of British poetry you are likely to read in 2017; and that it seems to me to be at once better, and slightly less good, than its predecessor, Berry's feted debut, Dear Boy, whose title similarly played on various meanings. I once was Berry's "poetry tutor" - for several key years in the now-famed MAIDA VALE GROUP I ran through the POETRY SCHOOL - other members included Liz Berry, Helen Mort and Phil Brown. I recall seeing almost all the poems in Dear Boy in early stages.

I have seen none from this new manuscript, though I predicted, even urged it to appear, in my several reviews/essays on Dear Boy, where I said (also in private conversation) that Berry needed t…